Ian Huntley's daughter discards her anonymity to disown her child-killer father

Samantha Bryan found out her dad was Soham murderer on Google researching a school project.

The daughter of Ian Huntley has revealed how she found out the killer was her father

The daughter of Soham murderer Ian Huntley has described how she found out her father was the monster who killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Samantha Bryan was 14 when she found out her dad was the notorious murderer who shocked the UK in 2002.

Now 18, Samantha Bryan decided to waive her anonymity to tell the country she was nothing like Huntley, whose name she cannot bring herself to say. Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, in a report published on 10 July, Bryan said she found out her dad's identity when she was researching the murders for a school project and found a photograph of Huntley.

"It was like being thumped in the chest," she told the paper. "I began to shake, I couldn't stop the tears. I try not to even say his name, as to do that is to acknowledge his existence.

"I hate him. He's never been my dad, he's nothing more than a sperm donor. To know he is genetically connected to me sickens me."

Bryan, whose mother Katie Webber was violently abused and raped by Huntley, whom she left while still pregnant, thought her biological father was Webber's partner, Martin.

"I recall Mum telling me that my natural father was 'a very bad man who hurt two little girls' but somehow I didn't want to know much about that," she said.

Years later she found out who that bad man was while studying at school. "When I got to the name Ian Huntley it meant absolutely nothing to me, nothing at all.

"I entered his name into Google and started scrolling through pictures of him. There were headlines calling him a 'cold-hearted child killer', that sort of thing.

"Then one picture jumped out at me. Although the faces were pixelated, I knew instantly one was my mum. And the little girl standing beside her was me at about ten.

"'Why was that picture there? What did he have to do with me? I clicked off the picture immediately. I began to shake, I couldn't stop the tears."

In the interview, she tells of how her mother gave her a "box of nightmares" days before her 18th birthday with clippings of the Soham case. She said the experience of reading the newspaper articles enabled her to draw a line under the dark chapter and realise she was nothing like Huntley.

"At times as I've grown up he's felt like a dark spectre hanging over my life, but what she told me finally drew a line under that, as it confirmed something I already knew: and that is there is absolutely no part of his evil in me.'"